1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information handling systems, and more particularly to information handling systems with improved controllers for handling asynchronous signals.
2. Prior Art
In the prior art there are many techniques for handling interrupts from a large number of potential interrupt sources such as I/O devices which require interrupts of the processor or processors in an information handling system. However, there are not many efficient techniques for handling other types of asynchronous signals, such as, power supply condition indicators, fan condition indicators, temperature condition indicators and adapter card present indicators. It should be understood that there are other asynchronous signals which are not identified herein which may be efficiently handled by the present invention.
It is common in the prior art to have a central interrupt controller with a line from each interrupt source to the interrupt controller. In many distributed systems where I/O may be connected to processors by a network and may be at some distance from the processor or from an interrupt controller, a more efficient manner of handling asynchronous occasional signals is desired.